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Ruined a whole pot of beans by salting too early and saved it with one weird trick
So last Saturday I was making a big pot of pinto beans for the week, trying to keep my grocery bill under $40 for five days of meals. I dumped in two big pinches of salt right at the start like an idiot, and by the time the beans were almost done, the skins were tough and they just would not soften no matter how long I simmered them. I was standing in my little kitchen in Tucson staring at this pot of hard beans, kinda panicking since that was supposed to feed me lunch all week. My grandma used to say never salt beans til the end, but I forgot. I hopped on my phone and read that acid does the same thing, so I checked my ingredients and realized I had squeezed in a lime early too, which made it worse. So I stirred in a tiny pinch of baking soda, just a quarter teaspoon, and let it go another 40 minutes, and those beans actually softened up enough to eat. Not perfect, but totally fine over rice with some hot sauce. Anyone else mess up a whole batch and manage to save it, or did I just get lucky?
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riley_miller2524d ago
The baking soda thing works but not really for the reason you might think. Salt doesn't actually stop beans from softening, that's kind of a myth, the real problem is usually old beans or acidic stuff like that lime you added. Acid is the big one, it keeps the pectin in the skins from breaking down, so your lime was probably doing more damage than the salt. Baking soda helps because it makes the water more basic, which cancels out the acid and speeds up softening. So you didn't really get lucky, you kind of fixed the actual problem without knowing it. Just watch how much you use next time, too much and the beans taste like soap.
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